What do you get when you cross Dorothy Gale with the Wicked Witch of the West? The answer may just come in the 2022 melodramatic horror film Pearl, co-written and directed by Ti West.
The approximately six decade prequel to West’s homage to the early years of the slasher subgenre of 1970s horror with X, this rewind throws us into the life of the titular Pearl, originally the slash happy elderly woman who we now see as a young woman. Living on the same farm in which we experienced the gritty, grindhouse type setting, we begin with the barn doors opening and witnessing something very different – a technicolor vision of fresh paint, healthy grass, and plenty of life.
Like the door opening into the world of John Ford’s vivid western The Searchers and meeting John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards, Pearl (Mia Goth – who also co-writes), instead of being content to remain (or come) home, is the type of young woman looking to leave her homestead for greater adventures. With a paraplegic father (Matthew Sunderland), taskmaster immigrant mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright), and husband off fighting in World War I, she dreams of being a star of the dance pictures gracing her local movie theatre.
Every time she rides into town to get her father’s medicine, she drops into the theatre, losing track of time in her wishful (and sometimes eerily macabre) fantasies. One such example finds her stopping along her ride home to dance with a cornfield scarecrow that might just be the utter opposite of the one found in The Wizard of Oz. . . the scene descends into a rapturous ecstasy of nightmarish lurid intimacy. Intriguingly, though her imagination and artsy leaning may be more akin to a twisted Dorothy’s perspective, she rides her bike much more like the Wicked Witch’s counterpart, Almira Gulch.
She also becomes intrigued with the theatre’s Projectionist (David Corenswet), a man seemingly full of magical visions and open-ended promises that may be much more similar to The Wizard than you originally realize. For Pearl, he is the bohemian flavor she is looking for – an erotic, open-minded drifter who could whisk her away to foreign Europe to help her become a movie star at the flip of a switch. . . perhaps by hot air balloon.
Unlike X, this time West relishes in a very different (albeit the same) landscape. Paying homage to the posh, vivid colours and melodramatic stories of the Golden Age of Cinema, for a good portion of the film’s one hour and forty-three minute runtime, it plays like a slightly twisted immigrant family drama infused with a controversial Pre-Code affair love story. . . that is, until it isn’t. Tinkering with touches of the time, West has the Projectionist cut a small portion of the dance scene as a gift for Pearl (something that actually happened – projectionists would cut portions of the infamous beach scene in From Here to Eternity as a memento); he also utilizes the iris effect famed from the silent era several times; and places a poster for 1917’s Cleopatra starring Theda Bara on display at the theatre – one of the most famous movies to be lost to time. Perhaps most obvious is the fanciful colours brought to glorious life by West and cinematographer Eliot Rockett – quite successfully recreating the Technicolor glow found in pictures like Vertigo, Niagara, and, of course, The Wizard of Oz (feel free to read into further connections between these two films, there are clearly some more).
It is also worth noting the acting. . . specifically two lengthy monologues, one filled with vitriol by Wright as an at-the-end-of-her-rope mother, the other more of a confessional expellant of Pearl’s hopes and dreams, lovers and hates, dark mysteries and unholy thrills that she has tried to keep hidden for all this time – both moments holding the camera captured in the respective performances.
An intriguing albeit more meandering prequel that helps to fill in some blanks in the Pearl back story (and still has a hauntingly abnormal atmosphere), there is no denying that this is becoming one of the more unique trilogies ever to come out of the movie industry. Spawning from the filming of X during the Covid pandemic, Pearl was fast-tracked and shot soon after, making it complete much quicker than nearly any other prequel/sequel. Now, the third feature – MaXXXine – is in theatres this 2024, making for all three releases in an exceedingly short three years – all paying homage to a different era of cinema covering seven decades of film history. So, here’s a rather obvious pearl of wisdom – Xperience this trilogy first hand.